


Dim Lights

by likingandloving



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 15:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7110598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likingandloving/pseuds/likingandloving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Ben and Leslie watch each other sleep, a dim light shines in the corner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dim Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I know that I've been gone for a while, but that's only because I started a new job (yay adulthood!) and have been super busy. I'm trying to write more just because it really helps me destress so hopefully you can expect more fics in the near future! Leave a kudos or a comment or do whatever you wish, it's a free world. 
> 
> And if you have any suggestions/fic prompts, please feel free to leave them below and I'll get right on it! Have a great day, my bubbies!

\---

The first time Ben watches her sleep, he can’t sleep.

Leslie, on the otherhand, sleeps like the dead. She’s tired and Ben is impressed with himself that he managed to tire her out. Her breaths roll softly against his skin and his fingers tap out a beat in tune with her heart against her arm. He stares at her ceiling and just listens to the song her breath and the soft thumps of his fingers make.

The lamp is lit in the corner; spreading a dim light throughout the corners of her room. It’s almost as messy as he remembers it being, with file boxes stacked against the wall and kits of unmade birdhouses and various scrapbooking materials scaterred on the carpet. Her nightstands are cluttered with various empty glasses of water which he has to remember to bring down because God knows it’ll be a while before she remembers to and at least four political thrillers and he chuckles lightly when he spots a Nicolas Sparks book in the mix. She always was a die-hard romantic at heart.

Leslie mumbles incoherently in her sleep, arm flexing around his waist and she drags her nose lightly across his skin. Ben glances down, watching as she wrinkles her nose in her sleep and shifts closer to him, as if any movement he made was indication that he was going to leave.

Not that he ever was, not after he just got her back.

He’s spent the last couple of months in almost this exact same position, except Leslie wasn’t cuddled up to his side. Instead, he would stare at his own ceiling, which had peeling paint and glow-in-the-dark putty stuck in the middle, and wondered if Leslie was practicing her speech, or if she was sleeping, or God forbid, building another bird house.

Ben spent countless nights wondering how Leslie was doing. What she was planning with her campaign managers and what speeches she was giving and what neighborhoods she was going to campaign in. Never in a million years that he would have thought that _this_ would happen.

Always wished, but never actually thought it was possible. Not anymore at least.

But when she showed up at that park today, saying that they should just screw it, screw it all, and do this for real.

That she didn’t care about her campaign, or what Chris would say or any consequence that he was initially trying to save her from.

Let’s just say “screw it”.

And he did.

Ben has always been calculated. Every decision after Ice Town was carefully thought out, a lesson he learned the extremely hard way. But when Leslie came into his life, he didn’t need a pro and con list or to think it out at all. Suddenly, the world’s lines of right and wrong were blurred.

She was the only thing he could see.

He knows he was snapped out of it fast, when it all came tumbling around them when he figured out that Leslie was running for City Council. He tried to be selfish, tried to hold on for just a few more days and make this feeling, of her in his arms, of her laugh resonating in his room, of the scent of her perfume lingering in some of his shirts; he tried to make it all last.

But in the end, he knew he had to make a decision.

And he decided that Leslie’s dreams, the dreams she had sculpted and fashioned so carefully ever since she was ten, was something she deserved more than just him. She’s always deserved everything.

His attention shifts when Leslie moves against him, drawing his attention from her pale yellow ceiling. She shifts around again, legs carefully curling around his and lips part in a few unintelligible words.

Ben smiles, tightening the arm around her shoulders and bringing her closer as she mumbled again before her deep breaths took over.

He doesn’t think he’s ever watched her sleep before.

Not that he ever really got a chance too, since her Circadian rhythm and sleep patterns were about as off beat as a toddler beating on bongos. His hands graze at her bare skin and starts counting the number of freckles she has dotted on her chest. Her breaths continue to brush against the bare skin of his chest and he watches the way her nostril flares with every intake of air. Her lips, ones that he’s grown to crave like an unhealthy addiction, pout every so slightly as her eyebrows furrow, a sign that she must be dreaming.

Maybe it was of winning City Council, or running for senator, or maybe even plans for the new park she wanted to build Ann on Lot 48.

He knows that even in her sleep she gets more done that most government employees do in a day because she was Leslie Knope. And he still can’t believe that she was his. That she let him be his.

He traces the freckles on her skin, mixing and matching them as he tries to draw constellations on her, trying to conjure his own stories that he wants to linger on her skin.

In the end, his drawings come down to three words that he writes and loops on her arm.

He doesn’t know when he’s going to tell her, or when the right time is going to be, because there are so many things that they need to get through. Telling Chris about them, dealing with the fallout from her campaign and dealing with the other consequences that came with this decision.

But he knows, deep in his heart, how he feels.

It’s ridiculous, honestly. He never imagined that he’d be in this deep. That the suffocating feeling of seeing her at work, even just a slight glimpes of her from around the corner. Her blonde hair would be carefully cascading on her shoulders and she would smile that disarming smile and he’d lose all his words; all stemming from this ridiculousness.

He dots the i on her arm and wonders what it would be like if he was still on the road right now, if he never came to Pawnee.

He imagines his bland Indianapolis apartment, the one that was decorated by his sister that last time she came to visit him and basically told him that his apartment was sad because it was all in black and white. He knows he’d probably be on his couch, feet propped up on the coffee table and a warming beer within his reach as he tries to help some other town that’s gotten themselves into a financial rut. Maybe later on in the week, when he’s tired of staring at numbers and decides that he needs some proper human interaction, he’ll go to the bar a few blocks from his house and order a gin and tonic.

There would be a brunette, probably tall and slim (because that was what he exclusively dated, according to Chris) who’d bat her eyelashes and he’d buy her a drink. They would talk and she’d insist on going back to his apartment because she’s a little drunk and he’ll just nod and wonder if this was the woman he’d eventually marry; some one night stand he picks up at the dingy bar near his apartment.

Instead, life leads him to a girl who’s binders are organized down to color-coded post-its but whose entire house should be a health code violation. A girl who argued so passionately she would probably argue you to death if she wanted to, whose dreams and ambition burned so bright that she would practically obliterate all of the obstacles that stood between her and her goals.

Well, he just knows he’s going to marry her.

That much, he’s already decided.

“Ben..?” Leslie mumbles, eyes squinting tiredly up at him as he smiled softly. He presses a lingering kiss to her forehead.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Mmkay.” She patted at the little pudge around his belly. “Just making sure you were here.”

“Me? I’ll always be here, babe.”

“Promise?” She yawns, readjusting her head to rest more comfortably against him. The question is probably half-meant and spoken through a slight sleepy haze, with her eyes already closed before she can even hear his answer.

But he starts to think of all the nights he spent without her. Not just because of their break-up, but all nights before that. Before she came into his life like the disruptive force that she was and turned everything upside down. He can’t believe that there was once a night he spent in motel rooms around Indiana and not knowing she was out there somewhere. And how there were also nights where she was unattainable in the most painful way. In his reach, but never within his grasp.

And how he’d never, _ever_ go back to that point.

“Promise.” He rubs his thumb back and forth over a small patch of skin on her arm where he traced all his feelings for her and waits until she slips back into her dreams.

He hopes that now, she’ll dream of him the same way he’s always dreamt of her.

\---

The first time Leslie watches him sleep, _really_ watches him sleep, the hum of Parisian life quivers underneath their feet.

She’s seen him sleep loads throughout the course of their relationship and marriage. She would steal quick glances at him when she would sneak out to her office to do work, or run her fingers through his ruffled hair before pressing a kiss to his stubbly cheek before muttering her own goodnights. She’s never taken the time to just watch him in his most vulnerable state.

The sheets are rumpled around his waist, hills of discarded clothing and imprints of their less-than-decent movements staining the hotel comforter. She still can’t believe that he surprised her with a trip to Paris because she was bummed about being recalled.

(Well, being in public office was her dream and being recalled was a nightmare realized so bummed might not have been the word to describe how she was feeling. More like majority of her hopes and dreams have been stomped on by a giant and left her dreams beyond recognition.

And she wasn’t being dramatic or anything.)

Some days, she can’t even believe that Ben was real.

Or hers.

But tonight, tonight he was her reality. Her sleeping, naked, snoring reality.

Her fingers trace the marks she left on his neck; the spots of purple and blue that bloom against his pale skin. She brings her lips gently to brush away the faint pain she knows she caused, as wanted as they were, just because she can’t handle causing him any pain.

She briefly remembers the time that they were apart; those three months of pure torture, of feeling her heart tighten and drop in her chest whenever he sadly glanced her way at meetings, how he always made careful movements to avoid even slightly brushing her skin. How whenver he glanced her way, there was a pained smile on his face because he knew was sacrificing everything for her, sacrificing _his_ happiness for her shot at her dreams.

He was always willing to sacrifice it all, just for her.

Leslie thinks of all the nights during her campaign that he stayed up and ran over her polling numbers, writing her speeches and telling her that she could do this; even when Bobby Newport was polling 50 points ahead. She remembers how he went to the pet store and helped her pick out food for the 30 cats, dogs and pig that she adopted because she tried to save the animal shelter budget. He laughed, despite that fact that his living room was a petting zoo, and palming her hip lightly as he asked the saleswoman if Omega 3 was better for pigs.

He was always so patient, so loving, so ready to hand her everything she could ever want on a gold platter that she wonders what she ever did to deserve someone who adored her as much as he did.

She’s always sort of been pushed aside by most of the men in her life, maybe except Dave, as if she was always their second choice.

Ben had always been the one who made her feel like she was the woman of his dreams. He listened, actually listened, to her rather than tune her out. He wasn’t afraid to criticize her, to challenge her thoughts and to make her realize that she wasn’t always right. He knew her, all her quirks and nuisances and accepted them all. He never made her feel like she was weird for her obssession with Joe Biden or bird houses (despite the fact they probably had close to ten in their attic).

And it certainly helped that he was probably the sexiest and smartest man in the world.

“Babe?” Ben stirs, eyes blearily opening as she realizes that she’s probably just been propped on his chest, staring at him for God knows how long.

“Hey. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“No, no, it’s totally fine.” He yawns, rubbing at his tired eyes. “Were you just watching me sleep?”

“Maybe.” She teases, smiling widely as Ben’s arm comes up to squeeze lightly at her hip.

“I’m surprised that you’re not tired because I am _beat._ ”

“Well, we have been walking around Paris since this morning.”

“Oh, I was talking about all that insane sex that we just had.” She cackles, foot nudging his sock-covered toes as his eyes flutter sleepily. “That _and_ our insane sex session should have you snoring cutely by now, baby doll.”

“I can’t help it! We’re in _Paris_ , Ben. How am I supposed to sleep while we’re in Paris?”

“It was why we had that crazy amount of sex. Because you’re sexy as fuck and I needed you to sleep before that tour of the Lourve tomorrow.” She grins, pressing her nose into the crook of his neck and dragging it across his skin. 

“So you’re just using sex as a way to tire me out?”

“Yes, but you must have not heard the sexy as fuck part because my wife is hot and I’m going to bone her as much as I want, thank you very much. But Les, we really need to sleep. It's--" Ben glances over at the clock. " _Good Lord_. It's 3:30 and we need to be up in three hours."

"Can't we just skip that tour?" She whines.

"We can, but I know how much you've always wanted to see the Mona Lisa, so we're not going to make any decisions right now that you're going to regret." 

Dammit. Why'd he always have to be so smart, all the time?

She huffs, a little disappointed that her watching-Ben-sleep-time was interrupted, but relents anyways because she and Ben have the rest of their lives ahead and there would be plenty of time to watch him sleep.

"Fine, but we're staying in bed all of tomorrow afternoon." Ben nods, rubbing at her arm and yawning as he reached over to switch off the lights and lets the soft light of the city flood in through their windows. 

"I have no problem with that." 

Ben pulls the sheets to cover them both and yawns once more, a clear indicator of just how much sleep he still lacked for tomorrow. Leslie thinks to herself that maybe she could get away with just watching him for few more minutes, still a little bit in disbelief that she doesn't do this more. But with Ben's fingers slowly writing 'I love you's on her lower back, her eyes slowly drift and close to the sound of his breathing. She is a little disappointed, but she promises herself that she has tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that until the end of time to watch him.  

But tonight, he can just hold her tight and let the dim lights of Paris lull them to sleep. 

\--- 

 


End file.
